LAKELAND, Fla. – Gwen Gentry makes a left on a small street named Connestee and pulls up alongside an old sienna house with a solitary black folding chair on the front porch. She gets out of the car and looks up. This is it, she says. This is Ray Lewis' childhood home.

She points to a clearing on the right, framed by two huge trees. Over there, she says, is where Ray first played football as a little boy.

Greatness grew up here, only a short walk from the Interstate 4 corridor that connects Disney World to the East and Tampa to the West. Gwen, Ray's aunt, used to live in this house too, along with Ray's mother, Buffy, and Ray's grandmother Elease. It was Elease McKinney who was the "backbone of the family," says Gwen. It was Elease, along with her husband, Gil, who raised Ray.

Elease McKinney is now in Tampa, in a hospital room, suffering from serious complications from diabetes. She's been ailing for months, throughout her grandson's final NFL season. Gwen says she coded three

After a season of replacement referees, botched calls and lockout-driven controversy, several NFL officials remain deeply upset about the grading system used to choose the referee for the Super Bowl.

"You see grades being changed, constantly being changed, only for certain people," one official told Yahoo! Sports.

Jerome Boger became an NFL official in 2004, a referee in 2006. (Getty Images)"It's disheartening," said another official, "and you never think at this level that would happen. It's the individuals running the show that have created this mess. If you talk to 121 guys, there will be 100-plus who say the system is horrendous."

At issue is an allegation that the NFL selects who will referee the Super Bowl based on favoritism, not solely on merit. This leads to Jerome Boger, the NFL's presumed selection to referee Super Bowl XLVII on Feb. 3. On Monday, the website footballzebras.com reported that Boger received eight downgrades during the 2012 season and all eight were reversed. Multiple sources with knowledge of the grading system made the same

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – In the coaches' locker room of the newly renovated Crisler Center, there are floor-to-ceiling murals of two former University of Michigan greats. Not pictured is Cazzie Russell, perhaps the most beloved basketball player in program history – he has his own section on the concourse. Not pictured is Glen Rice, who shot Michigan to its most recent national title in 1989 – he too has tributes elsewhere in the building. No, the two Wolverines in the coaches' room are Jalen Rose and Juwan Howard, leaders of the most beloved and disgraced team in Michigan history.

The Fab Five is still hovering over this program, a generation after the players left. The group led Michigan to back-to-back national championship games (as freshmen and sophomores) with a brand of basketball that was ferocious and freewheeling and a little bit feckless. But after they left, Chris Webber was found to have taken money from a booster, the university took down both of those Final Four banners

On the field, 2012 has been one of the most compelling NFL seasons in recent memory, but the last 12 months off the field have been unspeakably awful.

Future Hall of Famer Junior Seau killed himself last March. Titans wide receiver O.J. Murdock committed suicide during training camp a few months later. Garrett Reid, the son of Eagles' coach Andy Reid, died of a drug overdose in August. In December, Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher killed his girlfriend and then himself in front of his head coach. Then, before year-end, Cowboys' practice-team defender Jerry Brown was killed in a car accident in which teammate and friend Josh Brent was driving while intoxicated.

After the Murdock tragedy, the NFL decided to put together a crisis plan for teams and loved ones to follow when the unthinkable happens. Troy Vincent, a 15-year NFL veteran who's now the league's director of player engagement, was tasked with leading the project.

Through this program, the NFL offers members of its

Notre Dame's Manti Te'o finally answered questions Friday night about the Lennay Kekua girlfriend hoax, saying in an exclusive interview with ESPN that he wasn't part of it – although he "tailored" his accounts of meeting the woman – and that the alleged mastermind of the hoax apologized to him.

The Fighting Irish linebacker and Heisman Trophy finalist at the center of a fake girlfriend controversy that has captivated the sports world for three days spoke to the network's Jeremy Schaap. Te'o gave the interview with a lawyer seated next to him in a conference room at the IMG Training Academy in Bradenton, Fla., where he is preparing for the NFL draft. There were no TV cameras at the 2½-hour interview, which was recorded.

Manti Te'o denies being in on the girlfriend hoax. (AP) Although Te'o came to Notre Dame officials about the hoax in late December, he said a group of people connected to the perpetrators of the hoax showed up at the team hotel in the days leading up to the BCS championship game in Miami. ESPN initially reported during

Oprah Winfrey ran the interview, but Lance Armstrong ran the show.

The second part of Oprah Winfrey's interview with Lance Armstrong airs Friday. (AP)The major disappointment in the first part of Winfrey's "worldwide exclusive" Thursday night was her inability to steer Armstrong in any direction other than the one he wanted to go. She led him to the precipice of some very dark places, yet she allowed him to avoid entering. And what's worse, Armstrong was able to subtly but effectively push across the (extremely disputable) point that he was only participating in a "culture" that was bigger than he was. That was Armstrong's biggest win on Thursday, and Winfrey's biggest loss.

The interview started off very well for Winfrey. Her use of several yes-or-no questions about Armstrong's doping during the Tour de France proved a terrific sound bite. Winfrey elicited a confession from Armstrong, which was the most crucial aspect of the interview. In the first several minutes of the show, Winfrey succeeded admirably.

Yet closed-ended questions (yes or no) quickly

Days after finding out his girlfriend wasn't real, Manti Te'o was at the Heisman Trophy presentation. (Getty Images)BRADENTON, Fla. – This is no place to spend the worst week of your life.

Manti Te'o, the Heisman Trophy finalist and NFL draft prospect at the center of one of the most troubling sports stories in memory, has been behind the gates and guard shacks of the IMG Academy here as the story of his fake girlfriend played out for the world to dissect. The saga has raised hundreds of questions, but one more needs to be asked:

Why is he here?

That's an easy one to answer on one level: Te'o is training for his dream of playing in the NFL. The IMG Academy is a great place to do that, with its hundreds of acres of state-of-the-art athletic facilities, its well-accommodated dorms, and its relaxing front-of-property clubhouse with a full kitchen and comfy chairs to sit and talk after the end of a long day of workouts. This is a fantastic place for football preparation. It is not, however, an ideal place for emotional healing.

Regardless of whether Te'o is completely to blame for this mess or